Identity

I heard Obama yesterday in a radio clip of an interview he gave to a Nevada newspaper. He was talking about the importance of Reagan as a break from the past, who 'changed the trajectory of America, in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that bill clinton did not.' (From memory.) He talked about the excesses of the sixties and seventies, rather than mouthing the predictable Democrat cliche of the excessive eighties. He mentioned the expansion without any accountability of government.

I was impressed. It was a very smart analysis. It showed a lot of awareness. It didn't appeal to the bigotry of his natural constituency. If his political ideas were as smart as his analysis -- well, he'd be a conservative. What a waste. The bright spot is, if he were to be elected, maybe he does indeed have some common sense. Maybe the realities of politics and the long history of liberal failure would crack through his indoctrination.

I heard a clip of him on the sharpton radio show -- catering to all your black racist and grievance-mongering needs -- and he was talking about "our" community. Well. So much for his transcending race. But reality is what it is. If a white politician seeking high office were to use such language, he'd be tarred and feathered. As it were. Obama said, "When the American economy gets a cold, black America gets pneumonia." A funny line. Two things about it. First, it's true. Second, Obama is not color blind, and very clearly identifies with his African roots. Racist? No, probably just racial. We need to make that distinction. I don't, a lot. But I've got that middle class white thing going on, of pretending to think that there should be no official distinctions, and no behavioral ones either. All our discrimination, or most of it, should be mental.

When Obama ran against Allen Keyes in Illinois for the Senate in 2004, Keyes (reportedly) made some point about Obama not being an authentic black, because he wasn't descended from slaves. Good lord. Keyes is a black conservative, who seems to have gone insane. He runs for president every election, and when he first came on the scene, I would have voted for him. But he seems a little mad. Obama apparently shrugged or laughed the comment off. That was the right way to handle it. Good lord. What an idea. You're not a Jew unless you survived the Nazi ovens? You're not Armenian unless the Turks tried to kill your grandparents? I hadn't realized that roots in slavery was the watermark of authentic negritude. My spell checker didn't flag that word.

Anyway, it turns out that the guy I picked up at the airport wasn't my son. In fact, I wasn't even at the airport. It was a bus station. Funny how I could have made that mistake. My actual son had to catch a shuttle, and came in about midnight. When he found that other poser there, tearing up my comic book collection, he tossed him out into the gutter. Such a wonderful son I have.

We rolled today at the Y. I got him a couple of times, but he got me once with an arm bar. That rarely happens. He's only been able to train in chunks of a month or so, per year. He probably has 5 months total of steady rolling. He seems to be gifted. And he is hellaciously strong. In a month or so he's going to be getting me regularly. I hardly know what to think about that. I'd like to grind the punk into the mat every time. All of those punks should be pulped, by me, all the time. Damn punks. But my son's excellence is my excellence, so I can't really lose. It is bothersome, being fiftyish. So much lost potential. If my son is a gauge, I really might have been something special, 25 years ago. As it is, I'm just a stubborn middle-aged man. It'll have to do.


J